Frugality Is So Lame! Or: What Will YOU Buy When You Find Your Pot'o'Gold?!

***If, after reading this, you feel the need to know MORE about me (like why I needed to smear my nose with Vaseline when I was 17), you can hop over to the very cool Jo Ramsey's blog and read a very weird interview!  http://www.joramsey.com/?p=917 ***
My husband and I have always been pretty frugal. Not by choice. Frugal is just a sophisticated synonym for poor, which is what we really are, but happily poor and kind of by choice, so no whining! We make ends meet on a fairly tight budget, and that means we sometimes eat a lot of Raman, I keep bottles of hotel shampoo for toiletry emergencies, and we have a lot of date nights that involve doing what we were always dying to do as teenagers...lie in bed together with no curfew and no one invading our privacy.

[image error]Yeah, we play a lot of Scrabble, too. Because it's cheap fun. But we don't spell things like 'frugal.'  We like to spell naughty things that make us giggle. Frugal and immature!

(Well, except our five year old, but she's exactly what two crazy kids wind up with when they get to lie in bed together with no curfew and on one invading their privacy. And we love her tickle fests and the great herd of stuffed unicorns that invades our bed with her on date night.)
You know unicorns are bad ass!
The other night we were discussing our fabulous September sales and imagining, with shiny, love-filled eyes, all the goodies that we would buy once we're rich, rich, rich!

Okay, I'm going to tell a heart-warming story about being happy with the little things and all that. But first, let's all admit that the only thing we've ever really wanted to do with any potential fortune is trade it in for gold coins, fill a vault to the brim and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck! Ducktales played a huge part in my understanding of finance as a child. I assumed all bank vaults looked like this ^.

"What would be the first thing you'd buy?" Frank asks, snuggling me closer than normal now that I may hold the key to all of his future monetary happiness.
"I would buy..." So many delicious, wonderful, lovely items danced in my head, I could hardly decide. "I would buy new throw pillows for the couch! And they wouldn't smell like dog. And I'd buy them all at once, so they actually matched, and we'd be able to afford more than two at time!" I sighed. Affording more than two $25 throw pillows? We'd practically be ready for our first MTV Cribs appearance.
"Ooh. Could we get that green color like that girl who we wanted to win did on that design show marathon we watched last Friday?" He half sat up, his eyes gleaming, and I considered how several consecutive hours of nonstop HGTV could turn even the most apathetic man into a home design connoisseur.
"That was a good date night," I reminisced. "Definitely green throw pillows. What would you want?"
Throw pillow minimalism? Or the inability to purchase more than one outrageously priced throw pillow at a time?
Frank tilted his head thoughtfully. "Those pans that go under the heat coils on the stovetop."
Since I don't often venture near the stove, it took me a minute to conjure an image of them in my mind. "Oh. Why?"
"You know how the house always smells like it's burning down when we turn on the stove?" 
"Isn't that because I'm cooking, hence the house actually is in danger of burning down?" I point out.
"That, too. But it's also because of all the meals you've already attempted to cook that bubbled over the pan or spilled under the coils. And now they're all carbon based, and they smolder whenever the stove gets hot." He gave me a scientific frown. I ignored him.
Upon googling "crusty burner pans," I came across this amazing site that said how to do a little ammonia based science experiment and get them amazingly clean! So we may ix-nay the entire 'buy new' plan and go the dangerous home science route! Wish me luck! (I got a D in high school chem...)
"I would totally get a new pair of corduroys." My trusty green pair had two butt-area holes that were beginning to show an alarming amount of faded cotton underwear, all of the belt loops were hanging off, and the pocket area was, inexplicably, two shades darker than the rest of the material.
"I thought you liked your old ones. I thought you were excited because they were the ones you had in high school and they still fit." Frank could not grasp the idea of desiring a new pair of pants when a disgustingly old pair were still held together at the very weak seams.
"Um, it's cool they still fit," I said with a blush. Okay, this is just a tiny baby lie. They do still fit. Because corduroy is lovely and stretches and they're low cut, so any extra belly bulge just kind of hangs out above the 'waist.' "But I think a new pair would be awesome."
Almost exactly what mine look like! And considering how unflattering they are on this very lovely, toned model body, maybe I should consider squeezing into another pair? This picture is from a site that offers an explanation about how to make your corduroy pants into a nice skirt. But that doesn't sound nearly as fun as ammonia bombing my burner pans. Plus, the only thing that would make these pants MORE unflattering would be turning them into a homemade skirt.
"Oh!" Frank bolted up, inspired. "I know!"
"What?" Throw pillows, stove pan thingies, new corduroys...what else on earth could two sane people want?
"Bikes!"
"Like motorcycles?" I imagined a gleaming new Harley.
"Uh, no. I don't want you to die. Bikes, like that you pedal." He grinned.
"Why bikes?" I asked.
"Haven't you wanted one?" he asked. I nodded. Because, seriously, who doesn't want a bike? "And  I bet you would look so funny riding a bike."
Then he got out of bed and pretended to be me riding a bike. Which looked suspiciously like a pantomime of a blind monkey riding a unicycle, but wound up making me laugh because, in his cruel attempt to mock me, he stubbed his big fat toe. Hard.
This is NOT what I look like when I ride a bike. I look like  one of those awesome French girls who ride those cute bikes and their hair blows in exactly the right direction and their skirts don't reveal their old, cotton underwear for the world to see, and they carry a baguette and bottle of wine in their basket and look sexy. Very sexy. If you disagree, may God smite your toe. Hard.
I put my arms around him while he whined about his toe. "That's God punishing you for making fun of me. And, you know, I'm the one who will make all the dough. Shouldn't you be sucking up?"
"I'm here to keep you down to earth." 
So we spent the rest of our date-night lying in bed imagining other riches...a nose hair trimmer (for him, not me, I swear!), those energy saver lightbulbs that are really expensive but very eco-responsible and help pay down your bills, dining room chairs that don't feel like they were designed by medieval torturers, maybe a tent. 
"The things we want are pretty lame," Frank finally admitted.
"They're not lame!" I said, and mentally replayed our list. "Okay, yeah, they're lame. So what would be cooler?"
"I don't know. A new car. A Challenger. Orange."
"Seriously? An orange car?" His eyes looked so sweet and pleady, I shrugged. "Alright. Done."
Okay, okay, it is pretty sexy! But, seriously, I never would have pegged my husband as an orange car kinda guy!
"And the house. Paid off." 
"How is that less lame?" I asked. "It's still, basically a houseware. Just, you know, the biggest one."
"Cause we could spend the money from the mortgage on other stuff!"
"Like?"
"We could go out west. See the redwoods." 
I had this image of Frank, Amelia, and I in a redwood forest and almost passed out from excitement. 
Just me and my fam...and maybe Darby O'Gill and some little people and a few Ewoks. You were thinking it, too, weren't you?
"Oooh. We could go to Italy and see the Sistene Chapel." I fanned myself.
"I could go to one of those glass blowing camps."
"You want to do glass blowing?" I asked, but his shiny eyes spoke for  him. Done! "We could get the baby horse riding lessons."
"You could go to yoga like in a lame class with other lame people who like yoga," he suggested helpfully.
"Those classes aren't lame!" I imagined contorting on a mat in front of a whole group of other contorting people. Are those classes lame? 
Yes, I realize they are kind of lame. Like most of the things on this list. But, like the other list items, they're also all doable/obtainable (okay, not necessarily the house and the car...but they're long-term-goal doable), and I really like finite, doable goals. I like having concrete things to work for that are total happiness bringers! And I think the reason so many of our to-do list items had to do with our house and family has to do with how much we like hanging out together. Which is another thing to be happy about.
So I've shared my family list of totally bizarre stuff we would buy if money came pouring (or at least flowing at something more than a soggy trickle) in. What would be on your list??